I've been running Mint 13 Cinnamon 1.4 for about a week, no problems. I've had the "panel" set to autohide since install.

Today the display started breaking up briefly every time the mouse crossed the boundry between the desktop and the "panel"

The problem disappears if I disable "autohide".

In fact, the break up occurs when the check box in Cinnamon Settings is checked or unchecked.

Only two things changed just before this started.1. Auto Update installed several updates. I didn't pay any attention to what it was updateing.2. Using ADDITIONAL DRIVERS I tried to install propriatary drivers for my display card. ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (post-re;ease i[dates) ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver The install failed. The log was 44KB of stuff I don't understand so I don't know exactly why. The Additional Drivers app continues to say "This driver is not activated"

I've run Ubuntu 11.04 on this hardware for 8 months with no hardware problems.

I had the same problem with the graphics "static" when crossing into the autohide panel, and also complete graphics freezes when I used "Add To Panel".My system is similar to yours, AMD quad core with Radeon GPU. I tried the open source fuglierx and the Catalyst. Both were horrible.My "cure" for the problem was to wipe the partition and reinstall. I installed all updates, and the 3.4 kernel, but did not install the fuglier x driver. The graphics are fine, for me, without it.I can't switch back to MATE - I like Cinnamon too much.